Chris Marshall

Moves to protect children from online pornography by introducing age verification could backfire, it has been warned.

The Law Society of Scotland said the plans being considered by the UK Government could see websites moved to countries less likely to cooperate with the measures.

A public consultation was launched on the idea earlier this year following a pledge by the Conservative party in its 2015 manifesto that “all sites containing pornographic material” must check users are over 18.

The proposal is for checks which would apply to content that would receive an 18 or R18 rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).

But responding to the consultation, the Law Society said the measures could actually lead to less protection for young people.

Stuart Munro, from the Law Society’s technology law and practice committee, said: “We all want to protect our children from accessing pornographic material online and understand why the UK Government wants to examine additional protections to those which already exist, such as parental control filtering software.

“However, we don’t believe that a ‘tick box’ means of verifying a viewer’s age is sufficiently robust and it could bring unintended consequences. We fear that the consultation proposals for age verification could be counterproductive and potentially drive those producing online pornographic content further afield to websites hosted in countries that would not cooperate and result in even less protection for children.”